For more than 30 years, the Iranian regime has been one of the world’s worst violators of human rights. Its breaches include the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners during the summer of 1988, as well as a systematic war against dissidents, women and ethnic and religious minorities. Over the last year, declining respect for human rights in Iran has worsened considerably, and has now reached crisis point.

It is more than simply unfortunate that Western policymakers look at Iran and appear to see only what they want to see. They heap praise on progress in the nuclear negotiations without looking at the actual content. They tune into televised smiles and reasonable-sounding public statements from the Rouhani administration and tune out the bombastic threats, insults and anti-Western rhetoric that invariably accompanies them. They push for large-scale rapprochement with Iran on the apparent assumption that its crimes will disappear if we somehow pretend they don’t exist.

A narrow focus on the Islamic State group and northern Iraq may lead to disaster - again

By Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC

With Nouri al-Maliki out as prime minister of Iraq, is the country on the verge of entering into a new era of freedom and stability? Will Haider al-Abbadi truly prove to be the leader of a unity government that reaches out to the Sunnis, Kurds, and others who had been shut out by Maliki's Shia dictatorship? Will the Abbadi government, together with new-found military support from the West, be capable of halting the progress of the Islamic State group and reclaiming Iraq for the Iraqi people?